The Los Angeles Angels and the Texas Rangers, maybe the two best teams in the American League, won’t spew much venom in the press, but their offseason moves along with some spring shenanigans will make the battle for supremacy in the AL West one of the game’s great fights.

The teams will meet 19 times once the regular season starts, but this rivalry, which started to bud two years ago, really got heated over the past four months.

“Once free agency started, it really got going,” Angels ace Jered Weaver says. “When we signed Albert (Pujols) and then C.J. (Wilson), and they came back and got (Yu) Darvish, it was kind of on from that point.”

The roots go deeper than that. Starting in 2004, the Angels finished first in the division five times in six years without the Rangers ever seriously challenging the throne.

Then, like a tidal wave, the Rangers engulfed the Angels’ reign by winning back-to-back division titles and pushing their way into the World Series in both those postseasons. Heightening the sting was Mike Napoli, an Angel castoff turned Ranger hero as he became the offensive force the Angels lacked last season.

That division upheaval led to the greatest offseason in Angels history. In reaction to Texas’ two AL pennants, Angels owner Arte Moreno gave new general manager Jerry Dipoto a book of blank checks to sign free agents Pujols and Wilson, who had been the Rangers ace last season, which also meant the move weakened Texas.

Those signings were the first shots fired over the winter. Texas quickly returned fire.

The Rangers were content to let Wilson sign elsewhere, although him landing with their chief divisional competition wasn’t ideal. Instead, Texas slapped Wilson in the face by dishing out $111 million to sign Japanese ace Darvish, well above Wilson’s asking price.

The teams walked into spring training with clear swaggers. The Rangers had consecutive World Series appearances to be proud of but two losses to keep them hungry. The Angels had their revamped roster and a two-year playoff absence to keep them motivated.

Once camps got going, the teams played it mostly cordial at first but got in feeler jabs.

“We’ve won it twice,” Rangers second baseman Ian Kinsler said last month. “It doesn’t matter what (the Angels) did or who they got. We are the team to beat still.”

“They are a very good team still but things are even now,” Angels third baseman Mark Trumbo said. “We have the pitching, we’ll have the offense now.”

Then Wilson took things to a different level a couple weeks ago.

After Napoli took to Twitter to say he couldn’t wait to hit a homer against Wilson, his former teammate, Wilson went berserk. He tweeted Napoli’s cell phone number to about 116,000 followers, which of course led to the blowing up of Napoli’s voicemail box and the hassle of changing his phone number.

As you can imagine, Napoli wasn’t happy.

“I don’t even know why he did it,” Napoli said. “I’m not taking it as a prank. … I haven’t even talked to him since the end of last season. We don’t have that type of relationship.”

That officially lit the bad-blood fuse. Since then, we’ve seen a bit of cat-and-mouse from both teams. This weekend featured back-to-back games between the clubs, and the second, a home game for the Angels, had Wilson scheduled to pitch against Darvish.

That game became the hottest ticket in the Cactus League, but those fans were disappointed days before when Rangers manager Ron Washington announced Darvish wouldn’t throw in the big league game—he pitched in a minor league game instead. The original reason was because Texas didn’t want Darvish traveling to Tempe, but pitching coach Mike Maddux later admitted it was partly because the club didn’t want the Angels getting an early look at the Japanese sensation, noting “They aren’t going to show us anything,” as a way to justify the scratch.

Not to be outdone, Angels manager Mike Scioscia later announced Wilson would also pitch in a minor league game rather than face his old team. Scioscia downplayed the gamesmanship, saying the team wanted to better control Wilson’s pitch and innings counts.

Whatever. There is probably partial truth to both excuses, but the fact is with 19 regular-season meetings waiting, these teams don’t want to give the other any extra advantages.

After that, all this rivalry needed was local media to get involved, and right on cue, Fort Worth Star-Telegram columnist Gil Lebreton wrote a Sunday column and called the Angels “the scheming, Albert Pujols-snagging Diablos.” Not bad for a jumping-off point.

The fans, of course, are getting into it, talking trash on team message boards and talk radio. They are even letting the players hear it when the chance presents itself.

“The Ranger fans used to be cool, but since they started winning, I don’t know,” said Angel outfielder Torii Hunter, who lives in the Dallas-Fort Worth area, near where the Rangers play. “Now I’ll be walking in the mall and someone will scream 'Angels suck!' at me.”

The Rangers won 12 of the 19 games last season and have won the season series the last three years after the Angels won it four consecutive times.

But none of those seasons will be as intriguing or heated as this upcoming one. On May 11, when the teams meet for the first time this season, the players will start deciding this thing. With its fervor, passion, off-field antics and quality of play, this is the Yankees-Red Sox rivalry shifted westward.

“I don’t think (Scioscia) would try to do anything to show me up, and I wouldn’t do anything to try to show him up,” Rangers manager Ron Washington says. “We’d just let our horses go out there and do what they do.”

Forget the trash talk, Twitter wars or one-upmanship. Between the foul lines is where this rivalry will be most intense.